Discipleship Sermons by John MacArthur

A Series of Sermons on the

Radical Nature of Christ’s Call to Discipleship and True Conversion

By John MacArthur

A PDF text copy of these messages can be accessed here
Used by permission of Grace to You

We live in a day when the biblical gospel has been tragically distorted and watered down. The following sermons by John MacArthur on the meaning of Christ’s call to discipleship are a much needed corrective to the all too common unbalanced presentations of the gospel that pervade the evangelical church culture. These are powerful sermons that cut through the superficiality of our age and hold before us the radical nature of what a saving commitment of faith in Christ truly entails on the basis of his own teaching. Jesus’ call to men is a call to follow him in a commitment of discipleship:

If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mk. 8:34-37; cf Lk. 9:23-24).

If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple…So, no one can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions (Lk. 14:26-27, 33).

The profound significance of these statements by the Lord Jesus Christ is underscored by these comments from the sermons of John MacArthur listed below:

These are the words of Jesus that are at the very heart of His gospel…These texts are about how to come after Jesus, how to follow Jesus, how to become a Christian, how to be saved, how to be redeemed and born again.

The gospel that Jesus proclaimed was a call to follow Him as Lord.

While the gospel of Jesus was and is the offer of forgiveness for all sin, and the promise of eternal life, it is at the same time a call to self denial, bearing a cross and following Christ, and nothing less is a true invitation.

The call to salvation is the call to follow Christ. Anything less than that is not saving faith.

This is the message of the gospel. So when you go to preach the gospel, that’s what you have to say…That’s the only true message that connected with the work of the Spirit will produce true salvation…If you give anything less than that as the terms of the gospel, then someone could be deceived.

Here we see clearly what is our responsibility in terms of following Jesus and in terms of proclaiming the message to others…You want to know how to witness to people? How to communicate the gospel? Here it is…This is how Jesus did it.